The new dual core phones like Motorola’s Atrix and LG’s Optimus 2X look pretty muscular by today’s standards, but Adapteva thinks it can do a little bit better than that. How about 16 processing cores? Or maybe even 64? That’s well within reach, they say.

Adapteva’s 64 core Epiphany offering consumes only about one watt of power and is roughly the same size as two standard ARM cores at 8mm square. Each core runs at 1GHz and could provide serious computational muscle while remaining easy to integrate into mobile devices where real estate is very much at a premium.

But it’s not just space that’s a concern on smartphones and tablets. Power consumption is also a key concern, and Adapteva is squarely focused on making its chips as efficient as possible. The company’s website states that its chips are up to 10 times as efficient as those of its competition.

Bittware, a company which manufactures digital signal processing boards, has signed on to produce boards using the Epiphany, and CEO Jeff Milrod is enthusiastic about Adapteva’s technology. Improvements in processing tech have largely come at the expense of efficiency, he believes, adding that Adapteva injected some “much needed creativity into the embedded signal processing world.”

The next step is for Adapteva to get some big-time OEMs on board. The company says integration into existing products is a painless process, and I hope that’s true. Like most of you, I’d be more than a little excited to add an extra dozen or so processing cores to my phone.